Seedlings

On Broadway it often seems that the sorry state of the musical is, like the weather, something everybody talks about but nobody does anything to change. That may be because everyone shares the blame. Unions impose cumbersome work rules, producers permit profit-busting budgets, and so on. The result is a system that penalizes old hands, shuts out newcomers almost entirely and yields barely one good new American musical a season. Last week a whole lot of somebodies, from Pulitzer prizewinners to giant media companies, decided to do something about it.

Their venture, New Musicals, is scheduled to mount some 16 shows during the next four years for pre-Broadway test runs at the State University of New York campus at Purchase, 30 miles from New York City. The facilities can accommodate the elaborate staging that audiences expect on Broadway. But in contrast to traditional pre-Broadway tours, these tryouts will enjoy financial concessions from virtually everyone onstage or backstage. A show that could cost $5 million will be mounted there for about $1.5 million. If it moves to Broadway, salaries and royalties will jump to normal levels. If not, losses will have been held down.

The group debuts in May with an adaptation of Manuel Puig's The Kiss of the Spider Woman. The score is by John Kander and Fred Ebb (Cabaret) and the staging by Harold Prince (The Phantom of the Opera). Says Prince, winner of 16 Tony Awards for musicals: "I see this as an opportunity for young composers, lyricists, librettists and directors to have a career like I had -- to be able to experiment, to fail, and from those failures go on to create successes."

Following Spider Woman will be works by, among others, songwriters Marvin Hamlisch and Jimmy Webb, novelist Erica Jong and playwrights Arthur Kopit, Marsha Norman and Peter Stone. Financial backers include Capital Cities/ABC, Columbia Artists Management and Jujamcyn, which owns five Broadway theaters. Investors have provided about a fourth of the first year's $10 million budget, with the balance projected to be earned in ticket sales, program advertising and merchandising.